Terry Part 10

Cochran laughingly explained: "It's more or less of a joke between Sears and Lindsey: each has a hoodoo on his place that makes it harder to get laborers. The Bogobos fear a great snake they swear haunts Lindsey's woods, and none of them wants to go near a pool on Sears'

places just below the ford--they claim it is the home of a monstrous crocodile, thirty feet long. No white man has ever seen either; it's a big joke in a way--but a costly one for them as it makes the wild men give their places a wide berth."

"What have they done about it?"

"Everything. Got up hunting parties--stalked the places for hours and days, tried to convince the natives that it is all bosh. But they insist it's all true, and stay away--and loss of man power means loss of money they both need this year. Both of them think the stories are just the usual Bogobo exaggerations."

Terry thought Cochran not quite convinced: "What do you think?"

"I? Oh, I don't know. It's hard to swallow the stories--man-eating snakes and crocodiles sound all right on the lips of the old Spaniards but where our flag flies things seem to sober down. Yet I've usually found that back of all these Bogobo tales there is an element of truth: and two years ago when I was clearing my place I shot an eighteen-foot python. Stumbled on it sleeping--glad it was!"

The evening monsoon had set in, rippling the surface of the sea and humming its cooling refrain through the rigging. Casey yawned heavily and went below to seek the planter's early sleep. Cochran remained with Terry for a half-hour, enlightening him with a running talk of the problems confronting the planters. He was well educated, progressive, and backed by ample family means had developed the best holding in the Gulf. He told Terry that on this trip he had succeeded in persuading thirty timid Visayan families to settle upon his plantation despite their native fear of all things Mindanaoan, and that his profits for the year would return him sixty per cent of the capital he had invested in his place.

"You will soon understand conditions, Lieutenant," he declared as he rose to go below. "Most of the planters need labor, and they need capital." He threw his cigar b.u.t.t over the rail, debating the ethics of uttering what might be thought a criticism of his a.s.sociates. "And they need farming intelligence most--too many of them were army men or government men before coming down here, yet they tackle a highly specialized form of tropical agriculture with utter confidence! They aren't farmers--they're just heroes!"

He half-turned to go, hesitated: "Lieutenant, you're going to like it down here--because we're going to like you. Now, of course it's none of my business, but if I were you I would keep away from Sears'

place--he will make his threat good. He has it in him to become a pretty bad man--but as I say, it's none of my business. Goodnight, sir."

After Cochran had gone, Terry, sleepless, slowly walked the gently rolling deck. Ledesma stood at the rail near the forward lifeboat gazing into the soft shadows which shrouded the muttering ship. At Terry's quiet approach he turned to address him abstractedly in the liquid Spanish of cultured Filipinos.

"Buenas Noches, Senor Teniente."

Terry answered in the same tongue: "Good Evening, Senor Ledesma. A fine night."

The natives' vague fear of the dark--wrought into instinct by a thousand generations of ancestors who crouched at night around flickering campfires in jungles through which crept hostile men and marauding beasts--had fastened upon him, stripping him of the thin veneer of civilization the Spaniards had laid but lightly over the Malayan barbarism. He shifted uneasily, looked out over the starlit sea.

"Teniente," he murmured, "I like not the night. The dead rise ... some sing ... some complain ... drift through the black mists searching for those they have long lost ... the vampires seek for unprotected children.... I like not the night...."

Lost in the ghastly realms of native ghostlore, he ignored the American. Terry rounded the deck once and when he came again to where Ledesma had stood he found him gone to seek the cheer of lighted cabin. Terry stopped at the forward rail, his face upturned to the big stars which burned in the soft depths of the warm sky: the Southern Cross poised just over the crest of Apo. Below, on the black sea, the thrust of the vessel threw up a great welt which bordered the wedge of disturbed waters: phosph.o.r.escence gleamed like great wet stars. The tips of cigarettes glowed on the forward deck where members of the crew lay p.r.o.ne, exchanging occasional words in the hushed voices races not far from nature use in the still hours of the night.

The morning would find him in a strange place, among strangers ... he leaned upon the rail in a sudden excess of yearning for those whom he loved, summoned the spirits of those who loved him. They came to him through the night--Susan fretting, Ellis affectionately gruff, Enrico boisterously cheerful, Father Jennings wise, patient, watchful.

Another, fairer, unutterably dear, hovered near him: he strove, as of old, to bridge the gap--and was baffled, as of old.

The eight bells of midnight roused him from his dejected reverie: he straightened from the rail. The Cross had dipped into the clouded crest: miles to the west a sh.o.r.efire bit into the black mantle that draped the Gulf. The low wailing of an infant and the guttural endeavors of the mother to soothe it came up from the forward deck where the native pa.s.sengers lay sprawled in the profound slumber of the Malay: pacified, it slept again, then the night was still but for the soft sounds of displaced waters and the creakings of the ship's old joints.

As he pa.s.sed along the narrow, ill-lighted pa.s.sage toward his cabin he heard a voice raised in ugly imprecation:

"I'll get him if he comes, the ---- upstart! Just let him show his face on my place, by ----, I'll fix him!"

It was Sears' voice. As he felt his way down the dark corridor, he heard Lindsey's low tones, reproachful, conciliatory.

A few steps further brought him near Sears' door. Suddenly he distinguished a figure outlined against the door, listening. As a match flared in Terry's fingers, the native whirled.

It was Matak. He followed Terry to his cabin, unabashed.

"Master," he said simply, "he talk about you. He make fight talk--kill talk--so I listen."

The seed of his loyalty fell on ground furrowed by the lonely hours on deck. Shame at having given way to a great depression swept over Terry--friends were in the making, this splendid friend already made ... and he had come to serve, not to seek.... He smiled into the worshiping black eyes.

"It's all right, Matak. You do not understand. You go to your quarters and get some sleep."

The Moro lingered. "Anything more, master?"

"Yes, Matak. Don't call me 'master': call me 'lieutenant.'

"Yes, master." He left the cabin.

Terry, always a light sleeper, was awakened toward morning by a slight sound outside his door. Looking out into the dim corridor he saw that Matak was standing guard over his slumbers, armed with a big bolo whose naked length gleamed viciously in the semi-darkness.

Touched by the devotion and realizing the futility of trying to drive him from his vigil, Terry lay back on the pillow, the rhythmic beat of the propeller in his ears. Asleep, he dreamed, and the chug of the screw became the beat of an engine bearing him away from the home of his fathers.

The Moro heard the restless tossing and stepped silently into the little stateroom, his young-old eyes fastened upon the wistful lines that marked the competent young face. While he stood brooding over his young master the dawn streaked through the open porthole, and a soft splash sounded from up forward as the ship dropped her roped anchor.

They were off Davao.

Terry had come into port.

CHAPTER VI

THE LAND OF HEMP

In three months the Gulf had laid its spell upon Terry. He had come to love the great slopes, from the sandy coastline to the last swift grades to Apo's distant top, the loveliness of the wind-tossed palms which fringed the water's edge, the sparkle of the ocean's blue expanse and its quick response to moods of sun and wind.

During the noontime hours the sun was blazing hot but he could order his work so as to avoid exposure. Out at daybreak, he usually accomplished the duties of the day during the cool morning hours, reading through the siesta hours in the coolness of his great open house.

Seldom did the routine of his work--the drill, the sifting of patrol reports, the minutiae of the service--overreach into the afternoon hours: then he was free to range the country, to learn its trails and towns, its people and its spirit. His big gray pony had become a familiar sight in every village, on nearly every plantation. Sometimes he was gone upon two-day trips up or down the coast, or riding the narrow trails through the deep green shade of the woods, his Stetson seldom touched by direct sunlight.

There was a never-ending pleasure in the hemp fields, great sweeps of tall abaca plants glinting in the sun: and in the sluggish, useful river which drained the levels, its turbid bosom bearing a few silent native craft, its oily depths suggesting a basis for the legends of huge crocodiles which no white man had ever seen.

He worked hard, but it was not all work. Many an early evening found him out on the broad Gulf in an outrigger canoe he had learned to handle with native skill, sometimes with Matak, oftener with Mercado, the first sergeant of his Macabebe company. Sometimes, when the surface was calm, he spent wonderful hours in studying the cool depths of the waters, the lee-sh.o.r.e coral ledges which bore fairy gardens of oceanic flora, brilliant-hued, weird-shaped, swaying gently in the tidal current: strange forms of sea-life moved among the marine growths,--some beautiful in form and color, others hideous. Once, while he watched a school of smaller fish playing around a huge sea-turtle, they disappeared as if by signal and the tortoise drew in his scaled head and sank to rest on the bottom as a swordfish swam majestically over the spot, then darted into deeper waters. There were clams as large as washtubs.

Often, while Mercado--or Matak--paddled, he trolled a flashing bait to lure the gamefish which swarmed in the depths. Rarely did such an evening pa.s.s without a long fight with a leaping pampano or a sea ba.s.s: with thirty or forty pounds of desperate muscle at the other end of a hundred-yard line, the song of reel was sweet. One night he brought in an eighty-pound barracuda but usually the larger fish cost him line, leader or spoon.

At times the surface of the Gulf was alive with schools of leaping fish: one evening he saw a great fish, a tanguingi, rise into the air with nose pointed upward, till, at a height of twenty-five feet, it reversed for a downward rush to plunge in the exact center of the ripples its great leap had created. Once, far out on the Gulf with Matak, he came upon a forty-foot whale asleep on the surface, rolling dreamily from side to side: the Moro, unafraid of man or devil, turned Malay-green with terror as Terry prodded the huge black surface with his paddle. Awakened, it upended in a sluggish dive, the heavy flirt of its great glistening tail smashing the left outrigger and drenching them to the skin.

Terry had attended strictly to the affairs which properly came under his control and in doing this and doing it well, had won the respect of natives and whites, a respect which had warmed into admiration among those who knew him better, into affection with those who knew him best. The loyal Macabebes would have followed him against any foe, and, better than that, they drilled hard and worked faithfully that they might be a credit to their leader.

The natives knew him as "_El Solitario_," "The Solitary," partly because he played his game alone in a quiet competent way, to all appearances equally friendly to all, regardless of color or condition, partly because he seemed unconscious of the lures of all those brown maidens known to be as shady of character as of color.

He had often stopped to spend an hour or two with Ledesma on his prospering plantation. He liked Ledesma's sincere, old-school courtesy, and he liked him because Ledesma was known as an Americanista, looked upon the Americans as G.o.d-sent to guide his people out of their sloth and abysmal ignorance. But he gave up these visits following a day when he found the dark-eyed, ripe-bosomed daughter alone in the house and learned, in her flaming pa.s.sion for him, that she had misunderstood the reason for his calls.

The frequency of his trips to the outlying plantations had increased as the weeks went by, especially to the pitiful holdings of some of the poor natives. Malabanan's coming had been broadcasted across the land, and an uneasiness had settled over the Gulf, a vague fear Terry sought to allay. But Malabanan's record, a dark and dismal history of hideous crime for which he had been but half punished, was known throughout the country, and was the nightly subject of fearful conversation in every hut on every isolated plantation.

Terry had ridden, alone, to the neglected settlement up the coast where the gang of roughs had rendezvous, but Malabanan was away. A dozen hard-looking natives had sullenly responded to his curt questions. None were working, though he had arrived during the cool of the afternoon and the fields cried for attention.